Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Before I run off to work today I thought I put up one more post. In an effort to get enough merchandise together for my first world community grid research advertising blitz I have been buying more football and baseball cards. These are eight bowman chrome football card packs that I just bought yesterday. There are 7 cards in each factory sealed pack, of course if you pull a relic card or an autograph there might be fewer cards in that pack but that's pretty much what most people hope for when they tear open packs these days. I bought these in a blaster box but I wanted to open them to get rid of all the empty space that the cardboard box takes up. Don't worry, I'm not searching the packs, I just plan on only giving away three to five packs as prizes in most cases and I want to be able to keep all my sealed trading card packs and other sports packs in the treasure chest. I like this particular series of football cards because they have a lot of autograph and relic cards in them. Hopefully this box will have at least one pack with something interesting in it. Maybe you'll pull a rookie card that could be worth hundreds or even thousands in a few years.

I really have more than enough packs to launch this project but I like to have lots of variety for people to pick from as well. I have been hitting walmart about twice a week and every time I go through the checkout line I see the area where they keep all the retail packs and the blaster boxes. The shelves are packed full of merchandise from half a dozen types of sports. I just cant resist buying something when I see all this stuff, even though I know I could get a better deal online or even at a local card hobby shop. I just keep buying this overpriced stuff.

What's really bad is that most people by football cards and baseball cards because they love collecting trading cards or because they are a big fan of a particular sport and they like opening packs in the hopes of finding rookie cards or autograph cards of their favorite players or maybe just relic cards from their favorite teams. Some just do it because it's something they have enjoyed doing since they were kids or maybe they buy them for their own kids because they want to pass on the tradition of opening packs and pulling out great cards that they can keep and pass on to their grandchildren. I just buy these packs to give away. I buy them because I want to encourage people to run programs like world community grid on their computers so we can find cures for diseases.

For me it's a very strange obsession and I am fully aware that it is an obsession but there is a method to my madness. I know I could give away many things as prizes and that using something simple like gift cards would be much more affective in getting people interested but by giving away sports related merchandise I have a chance to be part of a community of athletes and people involved in the sports entertainment community. You see by giving away football cards I can use different keywords in my posts and interact with athletes, coaches, trainers, sportscasters and sports fans on social media outlets. This gives me the potential to reach out to celebrities in the world of competitive sports and that could be huge for programs like world community grid and folding@home.

I'm really just trying to advertise grid computing and show its potential for finding cures for disease or at least finding new drugs that can alleviate human suffering. I think there is a great future for programs like these that let home users become part of the disease research community. If through my efforts I can increase the amount of people using this program by just one percent I will have accomplished something great.

For those of you that are truly interested in trying to help find cures for diseases like cancer or for the readers of this post that want to get some great sealed packs of football cards just read this post. You will need to be a member of my world community grid team and actively running the program if you want to win any of the prizes I will have up for grabs in the future. Please take the time to read through that post. I think it explains a lot to those that are unfamiliar with how grid computing works. If you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask below in the comments.

Just adding a few packs of magic the gathering cards to the treasure chest today. I'm looking through some of the older booster packs I have to list and I'm amazed at what I have. I just wish I had some sealed packs from the first few years of magic the gathering. If I had some of those I could really get some members of the MTG community interested in running the grid program. Some of the cards in those early sets are worth thousands of dollars. Maybe someday I'll save enough money to buy some of them but I would need to buy a whole booster box and that can be very expensive.

Today I just have three packs to add to my treasure box. They are two packs of Avacyn Restored and one pack of Alara Reborn. The Alara Reborn set came out in April of 2009, these packs go for about five to ten dollars online depending on where you shop. Some of the best cards are Jenara Asura of War, Lord of Extinction, Sen Triplets and Sphinx of the Steel Wind but there are many more hidden gems in this series. I won't go into the higher end cards in the Avacyn Restored packs because these are still newer cards. Whatever might be in these packs I hope you all pull mythic rares when you open them.

Remember that if you want to own any of these packs you will have to be participating in one of my world community grid or folding at home contests. I don't have an active contest at the time of this post but when I do run my contests you must be an active member of one of my grid teams to even be able to try and win these magic the gathering booster packs. To learn how WCG works and to join my team please read this post. If you have any questions after reading this plese don't hesitate to ask them in the comment section of that blog post or this one. I am always checking my blogs for user comments and I will reply back very quickly. In addiction you can always contact me through my Facebook fan page. You can find the link to it in the right sidebar on this blog.

Keep watching this blog for future updates. I have many football and baseball packs that I will be posting pics of and adding to the prize pool. I also have many more vintage packs of magic the gathering to upload scans of. A huge giveaway will be coming soon as well, you will only need to run world community grid on your computer for a few days to participate. The only other requirement is that you have a YouTube and Facebook account. I will probably end up giving away hundreds of sealed packs of cards while I'm running this project so keep watching this blog for daily updates.

Monday, August 25, 2014

I'm planning on starting my first project soon. It will involve me finding people who will download the world community grid program and run it for a few days. Once they complete some data I will send them three packs of cards that they must display in a YouTube video. Once they do that they will be eligible to participate in a contest I will launch once I get 20-30 participants. I will be seeking out participants myself rather than allowing everyone who reads this blog to join. I'm doing it this way so I can get people who have a sizable audience on YouTube or Facebook.

I plan on launching three separate projects and in order to do this I need more packs of both baseball and football cards. I assume I will be able to purchase all the additional packs I need by the end of September or by early October at the latest. I'm already working on the drafts of four separate posts I need to make to bring this all together. Please have patience while I get everything together.

Today I bought some 2014 bowman platinum cards to add to the treasure chest in preparation for my first YouTube project launch. There were eight packs in a blaster box I bought and I had three more packs I bought last week for a total of eleven. Lets hope there are some nice relic cards or an autograph rookie in some of these packs.

Remember if you want to win some of these packs in the future or be a part of any of my contests you will have to be on my world community grid team.

Recently I was going through some of the old baseball wax packs I have and I realized I had close to 100 packs of Donruss 1990 cards. This isn't anything to get excited about though because these are probably some of the most worthless cards you could own. That being said I really don't want to be sitting on these any longer so at some point in the future I will be running a contest for baseball packs only and these will just be bonus packs I throw out to go with the much better packs that will be the bulk of each prize package. I'm adding these to the treasure chest.

Keeping this post short as I bought some newer baseball packs today that I want to get up on this blog. If you want to get any of the sports packs I show pictures of on this blog you will need to be on my world community grid team. You can learn about the program by reading this post.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

I'm going to keep this post short as this is just a repeat of the post I made just a few hours ago. Here is another lot of football cards I've been hoarding since I was a kid. I think I bought these when I was in the 8th grade or maybe when I was barely a freshman in high school. I was an impressionable young lad that thought these cards would make me rich some day. I probably paid about fifty cents a piece for these way back when and now they are probably worth half that. All kidding aside there are still some great cards in these. These can be fun to open when you don't have to worry about reducing the value of your cards plus you can find a few keepers like a Troy Aikman, Joe Montana or Kevin Butler along with a dozen or so other cards. Until these sealed vintage packs make it into your hands they will be added to the treasure chest.

Way back in the late 80s and early 90s I went to the local hobby shop and spent a few hundred dollars on boxes of football, baseball and basketball cards. It was a lot of money for a kid like me. I thought it was a good investment though. I figure by the time I became an old man I would at the very least be able to buy a house. Unfortunately for me the time that I bought these was during the years that the card industry overprinted its merchandise. If I would have just spent a little more money and bought vintage cards from the 60s and 70s I would be sitting pretty right now.

Right now if you factor in inflation most of the older packs of cards I have are worth less than what I paid for them back in the day. That's not to say that they don't have value and now that I can can give these away in my world community grid project I can find people to dump my old wax packs on. You can pretty much pick these packs up online for less than a dollar each and you will probably be tossing a lot of these cards in the trash because over printing means that they will never be worth anything, however the good cards still have some value so maybe you can grab an Emmitt Smith, John Elway, Barry Sanders or Joe Montana to add to your collection. I would say there are about 20 cards you could pull from one of these packs that would be worth sticking in a toploader. Maybe you will just keep these packs in a safe place or give them to your kids. One idea might be to open them on a youtube video, if you;re into vintage cards it could be a good conversation piece for some of your viewers. For now these will sit in my treasure chest until they are pulled for prizes or bonuses.

Whatever you do just be sure to join my world community grid team because by running this program you are actually helping find cures for many diseases and getting a reward or some free packs of cards is just a bonus. The real benifit is living in a future were disease like cancer are just a memory. Visit this link below to learn how the program works and if you have any questions at all don't be affraid to ask.http://endthedisease.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-to-run-world-community-grid-on-your.html

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

I was going through the cardboard box that I keep my packs in before I list them on this blog and I realized that I still have some of the baseball packs that I bought in the bargain bin at walmart. I only paid a dollar for each of these but there might be some good cards in these packs and I need to get them in the treasure chest anyway.

There are seven packs of topps 2012 series one baseball cards here and one pack of 2013 series one. I don't know if these will go very fast or not. Even if they don't they will appreciate in value as they age so I'm sure sooner or later someone will grab them as a bonus pull in a contest. If they sit in the chest for years I might just pull them and use them as automatic bonus packs to contest winners.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

I took a trip to walmart a few weeks ago and I picked up a pack of bowman baseball cards while I was doing my grocery shopping. I bought one of the three pack value deals. I like these for two reasons. They make it hard for pack searchers to go through cards and pull out the packs that have hits in them and they come with three special border cards that are also sealed in plastic. I get to give these packs away and I still have the chase cards to do something with in the future. Of course I will probably give these away at some point as well but it gives me extra value with my purchase. I also bough three more packs today of what I thought were 2014 bowman cards but I'm so blind that they turned out to be some other series that are produced by topps. I really have no idea what they are and I can't find an image of these packs online so I guess I will have to wait until I can do more research and post these once I know for sure what they are. For now I will just put the bowman cards in the treasure chest.

On a side not I miscounted the number of cards we have in the treasure chest. I actually have about ten more pack in total than what I had listed. I swear my brain doesn't work right anymore. I corrected the mistake and now we have close to 200 sealed packs.

These are some sealed packs of World of Warcraft cards from War of the Ancients I picked up a year or two ago. At the time I had some friends that were playing it and they mentioned how hard to get and expensive the packs were. I guess that's why I bought them on a whim. Now that I've had time to check out these packs online I see that this TCG has been discontinued by the manufacturer. I also see that prices on boxes have fallen significantly. One the one hand this will become a dead table top gaming platform but on the other it will become highly collectible to a select group of hardcore fans. I'm wondering if I should buy a couple of big boxes of these packs just to save for a future contest that will just revolve around the WoW community. For now these packs will go in the treasure chest.

I don't know if I will do that or hold onto the funds I have now. My amazon balance is actually pretty low right now. I have less than $100 in my account. With all the cards I have now it would probably be best to hold of on any purchases until I get rid of some of the merchandise I have now.

Monday, August 18, 2014

I'm putting together another post with some magic the gathering booster packs. I want to get some more of these up before I start running contests. In the first pic I have three sealed packs of an older series. These are Nemesis. The Nemesis set came out in February of 2000. There are not a lot of high priced cards in this set from the research I've done but there are some that can go for over $10. Look for Kor Haven, Tangle Wire and Submerge.

The second set of cards are from the 2012 magic the gathering core set. I have six of these. They are only about two years old at the time I'm posting this but they have already risen in value from the day I purchased them.

All of these sealed booster packs are being added to the treasure chest. It's getting really big now. I'm getting close to having 200 packs in it. The first contest for cards will be launched soon.